The politics of integrity: Dirty hands and the greater good

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Here is the moral politician: it is by his dirty hands that we know him. If he were a moral man, and nothing else, his hands would not be dirty; if he were a politician and nothing else, he would pretend that they were clean (Walzer).

ABSTRACT Purity and politics do not mix, and Walzer’s recognition of this fact is to be commended. Where he errs however, is in his precise diagnosis of the problem. Implicit in the title quote is Walzer’s vision of two incommensurable and conflicting moral worlds, the deontological and the utilitarian, between which the moral politician is tragically caught; utilitarianism explains the politician’s moral obligation to get his hands dirty while deontology* explains the immorality of dirty hands. But this framework is flawed, since neither deontology nor utilitarianism, nor any combination of the two, is sufficiently subtle to be able to make sense of the troubled state of mind in which a moral politician will find himself in. The problem of dirty hands cannot be made to rest on the authority of these two ethical systems. Instead, a superior account of the moral politician is given by an identity-based ethical framework of the kind envisioned by such philosophers as Stuart Hampshire and Charles Taylor. The conscientious politician should be seen not as a moral agent juggling two incommensurable universal rule-systems, but as a particular person struggling to sustain a coherent identity in a political world which threatens to tear him apart.


1 Introduction

Politics should be regarded as less like an exercise in producing truthful statements and more like a poker game… there is an expectation by a poker player that you try to deceive them as part of the game. (Newey, cited in Hinsliff 2003)

As this quote demonstrates, the idea that politicians cannot be trusted, that they are a peculiarly bad bunch, has become a platitude in our society. We may criticise politicians for their crookedness, but we do not really expect any better of them. Is this a sign of pessimistic resignation, or do we simply recognise that a politician must be bad in order to be a politician? For him, it is often right to do what is wrong – we want our political leaders to have dirty hands.

This is the problem which will be addressed in this essay. The aim is to conceive of a moral framework which makes sense of our complex intuitions on this subject. I will begin by outlining Michael Walzer’s conception of the problem - his vision of two incommensurable moral worlds. In sections three, four and five it will be argued that both deontology and utilitarianism are too insolubly problematic to adequately explain the problem of dirty hands. Finally, in section six, I will propose that the only coherent account of the moral politician is provided by an identity-based morality and will proceed to redefine the politician’s dilemma in terms of this theory.


2 Investigating Walzer’s claim: The moral politician as heroic criminal

2.1 Two moral worlds

There are two worlds, that of personal morality and that of public organisation. There are two ethical codes, both ultimate’ (Berlin 1992: 217)

In ‘The Question of Machiavelli’, Berlin interprets Machiavelli as recognising the existence of at least two incommensurable moral universes. In the Christian moral world a man’s proper end is to obey moral law and refrain from evil acts under any circumstances. In the political world meanwhile, a man’s rightful end is to achieve glory for his country, by whatever means necessary. Substitute ‘glory’ for ‘greater good’ and you have Walzer’s very similar conception of the distinct deontological and utilitarian worldviews (Walzer 1974: 63)**. For the proponent of a deontological normative theory, the end never justifies the means, we must fulfil the whole list of our moral obligations regardless of the consequences. For the utilitarian, the opposite is true - all actions are to be judged entirely by their consequences - the end always justifies the means.


2.2 A murky business: the necessity of utilitarianism in politics

For Walzer, a politician must adopt utilitarian ethics if he is to be at all effective, and this requires that deontological prohibitions be brushed aside. Even a man of absolutely pure intentions, one who enters the political world only to benefit others, must learn to play dirty if he is to stand any chance of seeing his noble intentions realised (Walzer 1974: 66). For example, simply to win an election, a pure-intentioned politician may have to ‘lie, cheat, bargain behind the backs of his supporters, shout absurdities at public meetings, [and] manipulate other men and women’ (ibid.: 67).

Many other philosophers share Walzer’s cynical view of the political world. Thomas Nagel argues that ‘ruthlessness is acceptable in public life’ to a greater degree than in private life because the structure of political institutions demands a more ends-centred morality (Nagel 1978: 82). Sadly, it would appear that Machiavelli’s misanthropic thinking rings true even today:

The fact is that a man who wants to act virtuously in every way necessarily comes to grief among so many who are not virtuous (Machiavelli 1999: 49-50)

2.3 The irrepressible authority of the deontological ethic

Since the two moral worlds are irreconcilable, Isiah Berlin advocates that ‘one must learn to choose between them and, having chosen, not look back’ (Berlin: 1992: 218). For Berlin, the man who enters public life has decisively left the world of Christian (and all other forms of) deontological ethics. This is where Berlin and Walzer part company however. For Walzer, the deontological ethic never loses its authority. While he thinks we may have a right to avoid the demands of utilitarianism, at least in the private sphere (Walzer 1974: 67), he is adamant that the claims of utilitarianism never fully eliminate the conflicting claims of deontology (ibid.: 76).

The reasons for this become clear when we consider the possibility of an exclusively utilitarian ethic. According to utilitarianism, a sense of guilt or discomfort caused by a transgression against deontological ethics is to be regarded as entirely irrational. The exclusively consequentialist nature of utilitarianism makes it impossible to give such feelings any moral weight. But this is strongly discordant with our intuitions. We may believe that a politician who lies, bribes and bullies in order to further a worthy cause has ultimately done the right thing, but what would we think of him if he felt no discomfort in doing so? By denying their validity ‘utilitarianism alienates one from one’s moral feelings’ (Williams 1973: 104). It is difficult to believe that a person who thinks exclusively in utilitarian terms can be genuinely possessed of substantial moral fibre.

For this reason, Walzer rejects Berlin/Machiavelli’s belief that the politician must decisively and without regret abandon deontological ethics, and advocates that, though in his actions, the politician must prioritise the consequentialist outlook, he must regret it every step of the way (Walzer 1974: 73). In this he is joined by Bernard Williams, who also seeks ‘politicians who will hold on to the idea, that there are actions which remain morally disagreeable even when politically justified’ (Williams 1981: 62).

But Walzer goes beyond Williams’ prescription. The strength of his belief in the undiluted authority of the deontological ethic, even in the political world, is such that he advocates that politicians be punished for their transgressions against it (Walzer 1974: 80). His worry is that a politician who has no hope of some kind of reconciliation to the deontological ethic can have no hope of ‘personal salvation, however that is conceived’ (ibid.: 80).


3 The failure of deontological ethics

Walzer’s extremity cannot be justified. Deontology provides a very dubious vision of morality which does not and should not hang heavy in the conscience of the moral politician. The moral authority of the deontological worldview cannot be the source of the problem of dirty hands if only because of the internal problems of deontological ethics.

The insistence of the pure deontologist that the consequences are always irrelevant to moral action is not only bizaare, but morally reprehensible. In fact, ‘there are very few kinds of case where consequences can be totally discounted in arriving at moral judgement’ (Barry 1991: 49). Take the example of the prohibition against stealing. It would not be controversial to say that shoplifting from a supermarket causes less harm than burgling a house. To burgle is to cause a personal tangible loss to someone and probably some degree of real psychological trauma. Stealing from a supermarket will, taken as an isolated incident, simply cause a trivial financial loss to an impersonal institution. The acts are identical but their consequences are differing, making one more condemnable than the other. Yet deontology, in its refusal to admit the relevance of consequences, cannot make sense of this.

In some cases, stealing may even be a moral action. A Robin Hood who selflessly steals from the rich and gives to the poor in the context of an unjust social system is to be applauded rather than condemned. Yet such ambiguous heroism cannot be comprehended by deontology.

Neither can deontology make sense of the proverb that one has to be ‘cruel to be kind’. The Christian deontology described by the likes of Machiavelli is based on a very strange conception of compassion. To demonstrate the virtues of kindness and generosity to all people at all times will lead on occasion, certainly in the context of the governance of a state, to very terrible consequences indeed.

Cesare Borgia was accounted cruel; nevertheless, this cruelty of his reformed the Romagna, brought it unity, and restored order and obedience. On reflection, it will be seen that there was more compassion in Cesare than in the Florentine people, who, to escape being called cruel, allowed Pistoia to be devastated. (Machiavelli 1999: 53)

As Machiavelli points out, it is very hard to see how a deontological version of compassion can be counted compassion at all. Martin Hollis echoes this line of thought when he considers how the unswerving principles of a martyr, placed in the context of government, ‘licences very foul play, provided that it is conducted outside the limits of [the martyr’s] simple moral lexicon’ (Hollis 1996: 139).

So given that deontological ethics cannot adequately prescribe moral action, where did the idea of morality as an unbreakable set of rules originate in the first place? The fact is that deontology is the ‘ghost of conceptions of divine law’ (MacIntyre 1985: 111) at large in a world in which it no longer makes any sense.

Walzer is not the first moral philosopher to take the notion of ‘personal salvation’ - conceived as having made no transgression against a deontological ethical system - and assume that the concept makes sense in a secular morality. Charlies Fried claims that ‘one need believe neither in original sin nor in any theology at all’ to share the religious view that obeying specific absolute prohibitions is more important than the welfare of others (Fried 1978: 2). But as one of Fried’s critics points out, ‘the notion of saving one’s soul does not survive translation into secular terms’ (Barry 1991:42). What moral authority can laws which may prescribe actions which will have cruel and damaging affects (such as refusing to lie, even when doing so is necessary to save another’s life) have without a certain believed-in metaphysics to prop them up? As no more than a list of unbreakable laws, deontology is rendered senseless by the absence of a divine lawgiver (ibid.: 48).

Even within the religious context from which it originated, strict deontology is built on weak foundations. Weber, in making the familiar argument that the politician must sometimes do bad in order to do good, states that the ‘the genius or demon of politics lives in an inner tension with the god of love’ (Weber 1948: 126). To achieve the greater good will apparently involve going against the will of God. Yet is a very strange ‘god of love’ who frequently considers the most loving action to be wrong. Indeed it is odd that Christianity is associated with such a strictly deontological view when this form of morality seems to jar with the Christianity’s founder (Barry 1991: 72). The man who claimed to be one with Weber’s ‘god of love’ rebuked the religious authorities of his day for perceiving morality as the following of a set of explicit rules (Luke 11:37-46) rather than as acting with compassion (Matthew 22:37-40); he even goes as far as to justify taking sanctified temple bread, reserved by law for the priests alone, if the need is great enough (Mark 2:23-27). So it appears that even religion may not really be on the side of deontological ethics.

Strict deontology is problematic at best. In a purely secular form it borders on absurdity. Can it really possess the irrepressible authority which Walzer needs it to if it is to explain the problem of the moral politician’s dirty hands?


4 The failure of utilitarianism

So does this mean that instead of two moral worlds, there is only one: the exclusively consequentialist morality of utilitarianism? Can we dismiss the problem of dirty hands as non-existent? Compared to the fanaticism of deontological ethics, utilitarianism certainly seems attractively logical, pragmatic and compassionate – founding morality as it does entirely upon the greater welfare of humanity. But on closer inspection, Walzer’s concerns that a genuinely utilitarian politician would be inhuman, and genuine utilitarian politics undesirable, turn out to be well-founded.

If utilitarianism is the only source of moral authority then, as has already been said, we cannot account for the politician’s feelings of remorse at having gotten his hands dirty for the sake of the greater good (Walzer 1974: 74). But, intuitively, it seems that something is clearly missing from this account. It does make a difference that a lesser crime is committed, even when it is done to avoid committing a greater one. There is something deeply undesirable about using unjust means, even for a just cause. To think like a utilitarian is to abandon some central feature of our moral psychology. It is ‘an act of hubris, a leap beyond the vulnerable human condition’ to think that a politician can completely abandon his natural pre-utilitarian moral feelings without losing his moral bearings in the process and the history of the numerous revolutionary leaders who have taken this view would seem to prove it (Taylor 1997: 181).

And not only do we not want our politicians to think like utilitarians, neither do we want them always to act like utilitarians. A vital flaw in utilitarian thinking is its inability to ‘take seriously the distinction between persons’ (Rawls 1999: 24). According to the utilitarian ethic, if overall happiness can be increased by the unjust persecution or exploitation of a minority, then persecute them we are morally obliged to do. Clearly, what increases overall happiness, is often in conflict with what is morally right. It is impossible to reduce morality to mathematics.

The problem of political morality is not expressible in terms of ends and means, of the calculation of consequence, or of the balance of one gain against another (Johnson 1988: 214)

In fairness, utilitarians have made a number of valiant efforts, for which considerations of space preclude an assessment, in trying to persuade their critics that utilitarianism will always lead to the right action. But in doing this they only deepen the suspicion that they are ‘trying to find a consequentialist argument for some sentiment which does not have its roots in consequentialist considerations at all’ (Williams 1981: 44). If we do not need to be a utilitarian to assess the moral fibre of utilitarianism, then utilitarianism cannot be the basis of humanity’s deepest moral intuitions, and cannot be expected to make sense of our most troubling moral dilemmas.


5 The insufficiency of the two moral universes

So neither deontology nor utilitarianism can be sustained as realistic moral theories. They cannot explain the problem of dirty hands, nor define the moral politician, because they cannot make sense of morality generally. But perhaps genuine morality lies in a sensible compromise between the two. Not as two independent moral worlds existing simultaneously, but as one ethical system based on deontological prohibitions which may nevertheless be broken on occasion if the consequences are sufficiently weighty.

But forcing together two incoherent ethical systems does not make one coherent system. There is too much in morality that just cannot be encompassed within the simplistic universal-rules-based thinking that is the shared characteristic of both deontology and utilitarianism.

Any account fully sensitive to the complexities [of morality] would regard almost all the substance of morality as falling outside either the sphere of rights and wrongs… or the sphere of universal consequences. (Barry 1991: 49)

For example, what of those obligations we owe not because of any set of universal moral rules, but because of our particular relationships to others and a specific social role – i.e. obligations which apply only to us. Even the committed utilitarian Robert Goodin accepts that utilitarianism has to allow for a politician’s partial commitments to his own country and to particular groups to whom his party has made campaign promises (Goodin 1995: 73).

Neither can either deontology or utilitarianism account for the role of motives and inner life in morality. This is brought out in Bernard Williams’ exploration of the vice of moral self-indulgence – the thought that what the person who fastidiously obeys deontological prohibitions regardless of the consequences ‘cares about is not so much other people, as himself caring about other people’ (Williams 1981: 45).

As Williams notes, this charge carries no weight in utilitarian measures, because utilitarianism is indifferent to motives (ibid.: 44). Yet the weight of the charge cannot come from deontological ethics either, since it is deontology which stands accused of leading people into this vice. Something is being missed by both systems of thought.

The part played in moral dilemmas by both social roles and inner motives is manifest in Herman Melville’s Billy Budd. In this novella, a certain Captain Edward Vere, a man of genuine conscience, must decide whether or not to hang his charismatic foretopman Billy Budd, a man legally guilty of murder, but nevertheless ‘innocent before God’ (Meville 1995: 68). After much agonised deliberating, Vere decides that the right thing to do is execute Budd, yet neither deontology nor consequentialism structure his thinking. Their failure to make sense of Vere’s dilemma results from their inability to take account of the moral agent’s particular history and commitments – in this case Vere’s position as ship’s captain and loyalty to the king – something which cannot be ignored in practical ethics (Winch 1972: 156). The story of Billy Budd points the way to a system of ethics which may prove sensitive and subtle enough to give an accurate picture of the moral politician – to succeed where Walzer’s simplistic conception fails.


6 Identity-based morality

6.1 Social roles

The aspect of morality which is so prominent in Billy Budd, and so conspicuously absent in both utilitarianism and deontology is that of social roles. According to a social roles ethical theory, the various social offices of which we are incumbents each come with a set script which prescribes for us particular obligations and responsibilities. For example, the role of mother incurs a responsibility to care for one’s children, the role of friend demands that we help out our acquaintances when they are needy, while the role of teacher incurs a duty to educate one’s pupils. Indeed, the abundance of possible examples makes it obvious that social roles play an immense role in our sense of our own moral duties. We know what we should do because we know who we are and how we relate to other people:

I can only answer the question ‘What am I to do?’ if I can answer the prior question ‘of what story or stories do I find myself a part (MacIntyre 1985: 216)

But there is still something missing from this account. Returning to the example of Billy Budd, a social roles ethical theory would dictate that Vere execute Budd, since that is clearly what his role as captain demands. And although Vere does accept this duty in the end, he is deeply troubled by it since it conflicts with his private conscience - what Vere terms ‘natural justice’ (Melville 1995: 68). While we might agree with Vere’s final decision, we would not think highly of him if he did not agonise over the decision and consider Budd’s angelic character a morally relevant factor. In the political context, the situation is reminiscent of the purely utilitarian politician – we may think he does the right thing, but we are appalled if he does it with an untroubled mind.

We return to the central question – in doing the right thing, Vere acquires something like dirty hands. Although he has no regret (Melville 1995: 85), and so cannot doubt that he has done the right thing, he acts with a heavy heart and is bothered enough by the event to murmur Budd’s name on his deathbed (ibid.: 85). Yet the cause of his troubled state of mind cannot be the moral authority of social roles, since none of his roles demand that he have mercy on Budd. Once again, something is clearly lacking – social roles cannot account for Vere’s concern for ‘natural justice’. The irrepressible problem of dirty hands shows that morality cannot be completely subsumed into social roles


6.2 Beyond social roles

It is possible to take the concept of an identity-based morality beyond the boundaries of mere social roles and make it into a more substantial and realistic ethical theory. In a purely roles-based ethical theory, morality consists of living up to the ideals of one’s particular social roles. But in a broader identity-based ethical theory, the human ideals which one strives to embody may have nothing to do with social roles, and more to do with personality traits and personal ideological commitments – commitments which detail ‘things we could not do and survive as the persons we are’ (McFall 1987: 14). The moral agent is thus defined not just by his social roles, but also by his private beliefs.

More than deontology, utilitarianism and purely roles-based ethics, this conception of morality is able to encompass the part played by the moral agent’s inner life. If the centre of ethics is the personality, then a person’s actions are only morally significant in so far as they reflect a person’s inner character. This idea is not new - it is succinctly expressed in Christian morality by the gospel story of the widow’s offering. Jesus asserts that a poverty-stricken widow who donates a penny to the temple, gives far more than the wealthy worshippers who make very large donations (Mark 12:41-44). In other words – in assessing a person’s moral character, motives, not actions or consequences, are what count.

This is not to say that consequences become irrelevant in this kind of morality. If benevolence and compassion are to be regarded as virtues, they are not genuinely possessed unless the moral agent possesses a deep concern for consequences and states of affairs. Indeed, it is possible to re-envisage much of the demands of utilitarianism as simply the expression of the virtue of benevolence (Taylor 1997: 171). Thus in an identity-based ethical system the main moral attractions of utilitarianism are retained – its selflessness and compassion – without any of its failings. There is no need to weigh up all consequences according to a single criteria, things which do not cause unhappiness may still be considered wrong and, most importantly for this essay, due weight is given to the demands of deontological prohibitions.

Where utilitarianism makes prohibitions meaningless and strict deontology gives them absolute authority, identity-based morality conceives of them as buttresses to a particular way of life (Hampshire 1978: 13). If the centre of morality is the self, then it makes perfect sense to have grave concerns about becoming an agent of evil, even when the consequences of doing so are good. People ‘do violence to themselves if they go against the grain, and act in a way which offends their moral character’ (Raz 1999: 243). To break a prohibition is to risk the disintegration of one’s identity, undermining the very basis of one’s moral substance (Hampshire 1978: 9).

The adequacy of this kind of identity-based ethical framework is well brought out when it is applied to the Billy Budd scenario. Aside from his role as a naval officer, what kind of way of life is Vere pursuing? We can see from the way he views both Budd and the diabolical Claggart, that he possess an ideal standard by which he judges them. Claggart’s mere presence provokes in Vere a ‘vaguely repellent distaste’ (Melville 1995: 52) and Vere later compares him to the biblical villain Ananias (ibid.: 60). Budd meanwhile, inspires in Vere only praise (ibid.: 54-55) and is referred to as an ‘angel of God’ (ibid.: 60). Clearly Vere has an ideal of human nature, measured against which Budd emerges as heroic and Claggart as degenerate. According to their actions, Claggart is a victim and Budd is a guilty murderer. But judged by their inner character and motivations, it is Claggart who deserves death and Budd remains wholly innocent. This is what is meant by ‘natural justice’.

Tragically pitted against his respect for inner moral character is Vere’s own identity as a committed naval officer – his duty to obey the naval law and to serve the interests of king and country. Importantly, the weight he attributes to this role is party derived from Vere’s own private ideological commitments. His steadfast dedication to the duties of a naval officer, to the interests of the navy and to the authority of naval law, is bound up with his conviction that the forces which Britain is fighting are ‘at war with the peace of the world and the true welfare of mankind’ (Melville ibid.: 26). The same respect for human welfare that causes Vere to admire Budd and detest Claggart, causes Vere to be attached to a cause that demands Budd’s execution.

Vere is faced with a conflict between two genuinely moral ‘oughts’, a conflict, that is, within morality (Winch 1972: 159)

By considering Vere as a man with particular commitments in a particular situation, whose commitments point in conflicting directions, we are able to understand his dilemma. To compare this account to the conception of Vere as an actor upon whom is placed both a set of unbreakable laws, and a commitment to secure the greater good, highlights the superiority of the identity-based moral framework over Walzer’s simplistic deontology-utilitarianism dichotomy. If identity-based ethics can make sense of a very complex and subtle moral dilemma such as the one Melville puts to us, what light then can it shed on the central problem of the moral politician and his dirty hands?


6.3 The moral politician

We can begin by saying that if a politician is genuinely moral, he enters the political world with a set of principles which are central to his identity – let us say he aspires to have the utmost compassion and respect for others. It is his identity, his core principles, which demand that he enter the political world, since he knows this is the only way he can bring about significant change for the people he cares about. Moreover, the same reasoning demands that he achieve in the political world.

But in entering the political process he finds that in order express his virtuous nature he must also compromise it – since in order to be effective and pass compassionate laws, he may find himself having to use dishonest and manipulative means. In addition, he finds himself embroiled in a complex set of relationships with a wide range of different groups - he is a member of this party, the representative of that constituency, the minister of this department, is a loyal member of the government and has promised to be an advocate for a diverse range of lobbying organisations. Each group prescribes to the politician particular duties which will most likely come into conflict. His identity is thus expanded to include a wide range of interconnected and conflicting social roles.

Politicians must keep a kind of faith with several groups who lay conflicting claims of loyalty upon them… Each claim is legitimate; each sets a test for what is best, which they will not fully meet. (Hollis 1996: 148)

In the face of all this, he must keep in mind his own private identity as a person committed to certain virtues and a particular idealised state of affairs.

Dirty hands then does not result from a conflict between personal integrity and some other force – all genuine moral commitments are identity-conferring and therefore integrity, as defined by Lynne McFall (see section 6.2), demands that one stays true to all of them. The tragedy of the moral politician is that he cannot stay true to all the various genuine facets of his identity – to act on his duty to his constituents may be to ignore his duty to his government, to stay true to the demands of honesty may be to compromise the demands of compassion (and vice versa).

Like Antigone, he can do no right. He must struggle to achieve the best for the people he is in office to serve, without in the process turning himself into such a habitual liar and manipulator, that he finds he has lost the respect and concern for others that prompted him to enter politics in the first place. Integrity demands that he achieve in the political world (to not do so would be to make his concern for others and for his causes a sham) but achieving in the political world subverts his integrity. The best he can do is compromise, to seek some middle course in which no one aspect of his identity is completely sacrificed, even while none is satisfactorily fulfilled (Hollis 1996: 148). There are ‘better or worse ways for individuals to live through the tragic confrontation of good with good’ (MacIntyre 1985: 224) and it is the moral politician’s fate to seek to tread the least dehumanising path.


7 Conclusion

Walzer is right to recognise that the problem of dirty hands is endemic in political life, but he is wrong to put the slant on it he does. Walzer’s conception of the problem of dirty hands rests upon the internal self-sufficiency of two universal-rules-based systems, deontology and utilitarianism: to be a politician requires utilitarian action, to be a moral man requires deontological thinking and to have clean hands requires deontological inaction. This conception quickly falls apart as soon as the inability of both utilitarianism and deontology to do justice to our moral intuitions is exposed. Such inadequate theories cannot be the source of the problem of dirty hands.

By turning away from Walzer’s vision to an identity-based conception of morality, we find that the impetus to act according to a consequentialist logic, and the impetus to obey deontological ethics, can both be traced to a single moral vision – the struggle to remain true to an identity. Integrity demands that we remain true to all our closely-held moral commitments and the nature of those moral commitments means that, invariably, this is impossible in the political world. Walzer is thus correct in his description of the moral politician but entirely mistaken in his explanation.


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Footnotes

* For the purposes of this essay, the term deontology will be used to refer to any theory which envisages morality as a list of absolute prohibitions against particular actions.

** It is possible to argue that Walzer also recognises a third moral world – one formed by the dictates of particular social roles. If so then, as is made clear in section six, Walzer succeeds in correctly describing one aspect of the politician’s moral condition. However, he mentions the impact of roles only once (assuming it to be congruent with the demands of utilitarianism (Walzer 1974: 63)) and does not make clear his position on this aspect of ethics. In this essay only the aspects of Walzer’s moral vision which he makes explicit are addressed – i.e. the importance of deontological ethics and utilitarianism.